9 Feb
2010
9 Feb
'10
3:09 p.m.
anyway... I've found somebody that has an archive
of their pages from
Prestel, and we'd both liketo get them up on the site. The snag, for
me, is that a lot of it is on 8" discs, from a Technologics(?) system.
The photographs of the discs I have seen show them labelled as 48tpi,
soft sectored.
That is a very standard type of 8" disk. The problem comes, of course,
that the secotr format is not defined by that label. It's most likely to
be single-density (FM), 26 secoptrs per track, 128 bytes per sector, but
there were assorted double-density formats, and I wouldn't be suprised if
sombody used GCR on 8" disks at some point
The positive point is that he still has the original computer, but
"it's not been switched on for 20 years" so I'm hesitant on telling
him to try it...!
I woender if it would be simplese to get that machine running again.
Although you certainly want to take it slowly, check the PSU on a dummy
load before conencting the logic boards, check for insulation breakdown,
and so on, I susepct that machine would be easily restorable.
An 8" drive can be conencted to most PC floppy controllers quite easily.
The problem is that many PC controllers only support double tensity
operation, which is probably not what you want here. If you want to try
it, can't you use one of the drives from the origianl machine?
-tony